Which mp3 encoding rate w/ipod?
Jan 2, 2003 at 3:43 AM Thread Starter Post #1 of 19
djgustashaw

djgustashaw

1000+ Head-Fier
Joined
Jan 2, 2003
Posts
1,013
Likes
10
I recently got a 5gb iPod (Mac) for Christmas. There's only one thing that's been bothering me-- I've been into digital music on on the PC for awhile, and as far as i knew, 128kbps was near-CD quality. After reading the forums, it seems that most are using 192kbps. However, i encoded a song at the highest iTunes possible 320kbps and i can't tell a difference, and that was running a pair of nice, albeit old, headphones through an amp. Should i bump up my encoding rate to 160kbps? 192 would be too high as i have to keep some headroom on the 5gb drive for future music, as my library is only getting larger. Thanks! BTW, first time post.
 
Jan 2, 2003 at 4:12 AM Post #2 of 19
Whatever suits you best, if space matters do the best you can with the room you have
smily_headphones1.gif
 
Jan 2, 2003 at 5:14 AM Post #3 of 19
5gb? I love how mp3s sound at 192, but with a 5GB player, you'll probably run out of room as your library expands. But don't forget that since you own an ipod, you use a remarkably fast firewire interface. You can change your music library around rather quickly using firewire. I would just stick with 192. But if you're really dreading seeing a message telling you disk is full and have huge problems having to update your library every once and a while, then drop it to 160 or seriously consider upgrading to a 10GB Ipod(if funds allow, of course).

Editing your library periodically is definitely an inconvenience, but it gives you a chance to clear out all the stuff on there you truly don't listen to.
 
Jan 2, 2003 at 11:33 PM Post #7 of 19
I have a 10 GB Ipod (PC) and I always use at least 160kbps for my CDs, sometimes I'll bump it up to 192 if I really like the CD. Once I started listening to music on the Ipod, I could tell that it would expose a poor quality mp3's flaws. So I wound up re-enocding all of my CDs, although my audio collection is rather small (3.5 GB
biggrin.gif
).

Lextek, do you know if it using VBR encoding sounds better than CBR? I've always used CBR with my encoder (dB Power AMP) and I've never tried the VBR setting. Thanks.

J.F.
 
Jan 5, 2003 at 2:54 AM Post #8 of 19
Fuse: Variable Bit Rate (VBR) means that the song has been encoded so in certain points of the song (when the full 192 kbps range or w/e you set it to isn't needed) the bit rate will be lowered (eg. the music pauses at one point) based on the encoders calculation.

So, it's not that VBR increases the quality of the song, it just makes it more efficient space wise.
 
Jan 6, 2003 at 12:18 AM Post #9 of 19
Quote:

Originally posted by mEtal
So, it's not that VBR increases the quality of the song, it just makes it more efficient space wise.


i.e. with the same bitrate, the quality will be increased.
 
Jan 6, 2003 at 11:36 PM Post #11 of 19
I use --alt-preset-standard with LAME 3.93.1. Don't use 3.93, it's buggy. 3.92 or 3.93.1. I did have to bump the max VBR setting up to 320, it was down to 256, which is strange. The usual is 128-320.
However, I would recommend if you haev a large HD (on your computer, not portable player) to rip your music as FLAC
which is Free Lossless Audio Codec. Large files, yes, (30MB or so per song) but it loses 0 quality, and you can decode them back to .wav if you ever change your mind about your MP3 or other lossy settings. Also, if you ever lose the CD, you can decode them to .wav, and you have the original CD again.

(-:Stephonovich:)
 
Mar 15, 2003 at 12:39 AM Post #14 of 19
i would still encode tracks at 192 or 160kbs whenever possible. even if you only have a 5gb iPod you can always swap out tracks you don't listed to anymore. It's a pain in the butt to encode so you only want to do it once. Or just download it heh...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)
Back
Top